After Once Upon A Time In The Midlands was blandified by committee filmmaking, Shane Meadows effectively retired from moviemaking. Thankfully, his appetite to fashion lean, personally tinged movies proved too strong to resist and his fourth feature is more than a return - it's a revelation, a forbidding, brutal revenger that's part Western, part bugaboo nightmare, all framed within the director's usual Midlands locale. Richard (a wild-eyed and intensely focused Paddy Considine) is a former squaddie who returns to his run-down hometown with a lone-wolf mission: to massacre the dealers who abused his mentally handicapped brother. Resolutely bleak throughout, Meadows's comeback is a powerful yet disturbing film which, surprisingly, develops into something more poignant come the end credits.
DVD Extras:
A superb jovial commentary provided by old-time chums, Considine and Meadows. Also features a decent documentary, deleted scenes and a tongue-in-cheek short.
